The
issue is not Religious Freedom for the Church of England. Marriage
only between a man and a woman is for the whole of society.

The
French rabbi Gilles Bernheim whom the Pope quotes with approval
argues:

“ The idea that marriage should
be made available to all who love each other is unsustainable. Loving
a person does not give you the right to marry them: a man cannot
marry a woman who is already married; a woman who loves two men
cannot marry them both. We cannot, in the name of equality, allow to
marry to all those who love each other; ‘marriage for all’
(‘equal marriage’) is therefore merely a slogan. The legalisation
of same-sex marriage would continue to ‘discriminate’ against all
those people who love each other but who are not allowed to marry

The slogan ‘marriage for all’
(‘equal marriage’) conceals the fact that what is being proposed
is a radical new vision of marriage to replace the existing one.

In the traditional, conjugal
understanding of marriage, with which most people would agree,
marriage is not simply the recognition of love; it is an institution
which binds the union of a man and woman to the succeeding
generations.

The
real problem here is how harmful this bill would be for our society
as a whole, and how, whilst benefiting a very small minority, it
would irrevocably blur three crucial concepts:

Genealogy:
replacing motherhood and fatherhood with “parenthood”;

The status of
children: no longer the subjects of rights, but objects which people
claim to have a right to;

Identity: our
gender ‘preferences’ or ‘orientations’ coming to take
precedence over sexuality in the name of a supposed fight against
inequality, which has been distorted into a movement to eradicate
difference.

These
are the core issues which should be openly tackled when debating
same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting, because they take us back
to the ground rules of the society in which we all want to live.

I
believe that human beings cannot grow, if they are denied structures,
order, a status, and guiding principles. I believe that promoting
freedom does not mean doing away with all limits. That promoting
equality does not mean eradicating differences. That the very power
of technologies and imagination means we must never forget that life
is a gift, that is will always be there before us, and has laws of
its own.”